Don't Call It A Comeback

Let's see. Black coffee at hand? Laptop charged? Gray morning light streaming through the front window? Sixteen year old beagle snoring on the couch beside me?

Guess it's time to blog again. 

Let's start with the basics: my blogging "hiatus" was, more-or-less, a miserable failure. At least in so far that it was meant to enable me "more time to write." Fact is, I've spent the last two plus months mostly avoiding any kind of game-related ANYthing...not just blogging/writing, but even gaming in general. At least gaming of the D&D (or role-playing) variety. Which is really the only gaming that matters much.

Instead, I've spent most of the time either A) working on myself, or B) being with my mother. The self-work has mainly been of the physical variety: a lot of nutritional adjustment, a lot of exercise. Got down to about 162ish, which is probably still about 5-7 pounds heavier than I'd like, but my flexibility and endurance is much improved (back in the yoga). Was off the sauce and mostly vegan+fish for a while...that helped a bit. Decided, I guess, that I wanted to pursue a higher quality of life going forward...I'm going to be 50 in November, after all. Hell, spent a few days swinging golf clubs in the sunshine of Coachella Valley last month...I see the appeal.

But, mainly, my time has been spent with my mom and dealing with her affairs. And on Saturday, April 22nd, she passed away, dead at the age of 75.

I don't want to eulogize too much. But my mother has been an immensely important figure in my life (mm...probably a gross understatement). It's perhaps a bit too profound to put into words: how do you describe the loss of someone who gave you life, who has supported you and loved you unconditionally for your entire life? She was always a rock and safe harbor to return to whenever I needed her. 

And now...well, now I undergo the final rite of adulthood. I must say goodbye to that foundational piece of my life, that emotional safety net that has always been. And it somehow feels (in many ways) that a new mantle of leadership has passed to me. My mother was more dowager empress than family matriarch, but for my Montanan relatives she was a lynch pin (the oldest sibling), a pillar amongst her friends (the godmother of many), and for me she has always been a crutch I could lean on if/when needed. Now it feels as if everyone is looking to me to be the stable rock in the storm. It's not a position I particularly wanted for myself, but oddly enough it has eased my grieving process. Being forced to action has that effect, I suppose.

For my blog readers...well, there's probably no blog without my mom. She purchased both my Moldvay Basic set and Cook/Marsh Expert set many decades ago, as well as my first Players Handbook (when I finally figured out the AD&D thing was a separate entity). She did not encourage me to play D&D obsessively, but she certainly enabled my passion and...more importantly...did not discourage me from my pursuits. She never played a game of D&D with me, but she never told me to stop, never took my books and dice from me, never told me to quit wasting my time with a silly game. 

Or perhaps she did and I just don't remember. What I remember instead is sitting around the dining room table with her and my younger brother playing the Dungeon! board game at the age of eight. What I remember is her acquiring copies of my newly printed books and placing them proudly on her shelf (my mother's home, even more than mine, is lined with over-flowing book shelves in most every room). 

Anyway.

Expect blogging to be a bit sporadic over the next few weeks as I'm very busy with a number of things, not least of which is my mother's funeral arrangements and managing her estate (she expected to live into her 90s...my maternal grandmother is still going strong at age 93). We also have friends in town from Mexico for the next ten days, soccer tryouts for the kids, end of school stuff (auctions and whatnot), basketball season, blah-blah-blah. More yoga, of course, though I am back on the sauce (when your mom dies, you're allowed to tip a few), but that should be (mostly) ending about the time our friends leave town, i.e. by the 9th,

But, sporadic or not, I expect blogging to resume. I expect gaming to resume. The last month or so I've been realizing some...hmm..."interesting" stuff about my gaming, my writing, and my place in this funny little hobby of ours. And I've still got a few things (or more than a few) to blog about. And the blogging spurs my other writing...for whatever reason. So I need to be doing both.

Deep breaths. More coffee. Shoulder shrugs and apologies for being absent so long. 

Time to cook the kids breakfast. But I'll be back. I am back.